A new approach to the Vedas : an essay in translation and exegesis

APPENDIX

station for true deliverance (nihsarvana).* This is in fact a state of “ passive integration,” inasmuch as it is reached “by the efficacy of the path” (margabalena labhyatvat, Abhidharmakosa, V1, 34); a salvation in the religious or mystical, not the metaphysical sense. The demotic conscience, even of a Saint or Bodhisattva, is arrested at this level of understanding, by a latent residue of ideal afiectibility; a return to consciousness is always imminent.

Proceeding now, however, as the Saint or Bodhisattva may, on the “noble” or “ transmundane”’ path (arya marga, lokéttara marga), the Wayfarer, now an “‘ aristocrat’’ or “‘nobleman’’ (arya), oversteps the mere “ suppression of intellection ” and reaches the “ place of neither ideation nor non-ideation ” (naivasanyjniandsamjandyatana), corresponding to “neither learning nor innocence,” above ; which place, viz. the highest level of non-aspectual (aviipya) being, is also called the “ summit of being,” bhavdégra. Then is he a Comprehensor, Vidvan, Muni, Sadhya, Jina, prabuddha, sambuddha.

As he is in himself, Sadhya, etc., his “ position” on the Axis of the Universe makes him free of its entire extension ; that is, he may operate on all or any of the indefinitely numerous planes of being that revolve in the ‘‘ middle space’ about this Axis, “‘ he goes up and down these worlds, eating what he desires, assuming what aspect he will,’ Taittirtya Up., 111, 10, 5. At the same time it is evident that from the point of view of any or every station on the Axis the source of Light, Oriens, East,

* Nirvana, rebirth in a Buddha Paradise (=a Brahma-world), though it may be mistaken for the last end, is not yet in fact an absolute extinction (parinirvana), as is explained in the Saddhayma Pundarika, V, 74, ‘‘ this is a resting place (viSyama), not a return (nirvrtt),” and ibid., XV, 21, ‘I display return who am not myself returned (anirurto nivorta da, gayamt),” cf. Eckhart’s ‘‘ It is God’s full intention that we should become what he is not.” As also in the Chandogya Up., III, 13, 7,‘ There is a light that shines beyond this heaven (Brahma-world), at the back of everything, and that too shines within us,” cf. tg Veda, VI, 9, 5, ‘a steady Light set up to be seen... , and set within the heart ’’ and ibid., IV, 58, ‘‘ within the Sea, the Heart, and livirg things,” all which corresponds to the Buddhist doctrine of the bodhicitta.

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